Friday, May 27, 2016

This weekend is Doors Open weekend in Toronto. More than a hundred and thirty buildings
across the city will be opening their doors to the public over the next two days — including some of the most
interesting, beautiful and historic buildings that Toronto has to offer.
And since there's no way one person can manage to catch all of the cool
stuff without a TARDIS or a DeLorean or a Time-Turner, I thought I'd share some of my own picks for this year's event.

I might be out and about myself this weekend and, if so, I'll be sharing my adventures on Twitter and on Instagram (@TODreamsProject). So you can follow me there!

THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. JAMES

Not only is the Cathedral Church of St. James one of the most spectacular buildings in
Toronto, it's also one of the most important buildings in the entire
history of Canada. The story of St. James stretches all the way back to a
small wooden church built at what's now the corner of Church & King
in the very early 1800s — and over the course of that century,
it played a central role in the battle for democracy in Canada. This was
the church most our city's leaders attended. The first preacher, John
Strachan, was also our city's first Anglican bishop, arch-nemesis of
William Lyon Mackenzie and a figurehead of the infamously
anti-democratic Family Compact. He's still there today, buried
under the chancel. (I wrote the full story for Torontoist a while back; you can check it out here.) To this day, it's still the heart of the Anglican faith in Canada. Even the Queen prays here when she's in town.

The doors to the church will be open from 10 to 5 on Saturday and 12:30 to 4 on Sunday afternoon.

FORT YORK

Fort York is one of the jewels of Toronto. A National Historic Site hidden
between the highways and the skyscrapers. The fort has been standing on
this spot — the place where the modern city of Toronto started — for more than 200 years. Its story stretches back through one
war after another, back through the bloody battle that raged here
during the War of 1812, back all the way to the very first day the city
of Toronto was founded. It was here, at what was then the mouth of the
Garrison Creek, that the first British soldiers showed up to start
chopping down trees and building the military base that would guard the
mouth of our harbour. Meanwhile, Governor Simcoe and his wife Elizabeth
lived in an elaborate tent overlooking the construction from the other
side of the creek, exploring the beaches and the forests with their
young children, their pet cat and a dog they called Jack Sharp.

The site will be open from 10 to 5 on
both Saturday and Sunday, with tours pretty much every hour.

THE HIGH LEVEL WATER PUMPING STATION

Just like the much more famous R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant out in the east end (which will also be open this weekend), the High Level Water Pumping Station takes Toronto's water
infrastructure and transforms it into something beautiful. And the old
building also played a central role in one of the most delightful episodes in
the history of our city. Back in the 1960s, the residents of the
surrounding neighbourhood — Rathnelly — declared independence from the rest of Canada.
As the story goes, they wrote a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau,
elected a Queen, issued their own passports, and sent an "air farce" of
children holding a thousand helium balloons to surround the Pumping
Station until their demands were met. To this day, the neighbourhood is
known as the Republic of Rathnelly. They've even got their own custom
street signs featuring a national crest.
The doors will be open from 10 to 5 on both Saturday and Sunday.

OLD CITY HALL

Old City Hall has been keeping time above the intersection of Queen & Bay
since the very end of the 1900s. It was built by one of Toronto's
most important architects, E.J. Lennox, the same guy who did Casa Loma,
the King Edward Hotel, and the west wing of Queen's Park. It's Old City
Hall that he gets the most attention for, though. In large part because
of his battles with city council. He went waaaaaaaaaaaay overbudget,
spending six times as much as he was supposed to. They retaliated by
saying he wasn't allowed to carve his name into the building, like he
usually did, but he did anyway. And hid his face among the grotesques adorning the entrance. Inside, you'll also find one of the most wonderful stained-glass windows in Toronto.

The site will be open from 10 to 5 on
both Saturday and Sunday

OSGOODE HALL

Osgoode Hall has been on the corner of Queen & University, nearly as
long as there has been a Queen & University. It was originally
built in the 1830s, with lots of additions and subtractions since then
(including that iconic, black, wrought-iron fence). The architect was
William Warren Baldwin, a doctor and lawyer who was one of the most
important pro-democracy figures in Toronto's early history. He's also
the same guy who built the original Spadina House, and had Spadina
Avenue carved out of the forest. Today, it's still home to the Law Society of Upper Canada and some of Ontario's highest courts.

Osgoode Hall is also where an escaped slave, Thornton Blackburn, got a
job working as a waiter when he first came to Toronto. He used the money he earned there to launch the
city's first horse-drawn cab company, which in turn gave him enough
money to help other former slaves get on their feet after coming to
Toronto through the Underground Railroad. (I wrote more about him here.)

Monday, May 2, 2016

The alderman dreamed of a night when the people of Toronto climbed up onto their rooftops, up to the highest branches of all the trees, up cathedral spires and skyscrapers. He joined them, too, high up the clock tower of City Hall. From there, you could reach the stars with a butterfly net. One swipe through the sky might bring down two or three at a time. They shone a soft, cold blue and were smooth to the touch, perfect and round. All over the city, they were collected in baskets and pillowcases and brought down to earth. They were taken to the sides of the roads, along sidewalks and ditches and lawns, where they were planted in the dirt by the light of the moon. By the time the sun rose, they had sprouted into tall, slender silver birches. They lined every street in graceful rows. And when night came again, those trees unfurled lush blue flowers. Inside each one was a brand new baby star. And all of Toronto glowed.

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William Peyton Hubbard was Toronto's first Black alderman — and even served as acting mayor on some occasions. The son of a former slave, he got into politics after saving George Brown (Father of Confederation and owner of the Globe newspaper) from drowning in the Don River. In the early days of electricity, Hubbard was a champion of public ownership of power utilities, teaming up with Sir Adam Beck to bring public power to the city of Toronto and the province of Ontario. You can read more about Hubbard on Torontoist here. Explore more Toronto Dreams Project postcards here.